“Tuesday’s tally of just over 24,000 absentee and other ballots gave Begich 146,286, or 47.56 percent, to 143,912, or 46.76 percent, for Stevens.

A recount is possible.”

The decision came on Stevens’ 85th birthday, less than a month after his federal conviction for lying on his disclosure forms. The win would give the Democrats a gain of 7 seats in the Senate from this election, with two seats still undecided in Minnesota and Georgia.

If everything goes according to schedule, the new reader-written site will go live late tonight. If you have signed up to contribute, get ready to post. You should be able to late tonight or early tomorrow. I’ll send out an e-mail to all participants when the time comes.

The site will be down and inaccessible to the world for about an hour tonight, probably around 10 p.m. Pacific, while the necessary changes are made to bring the new site online.

Via Michelle comes a description of an angry mob’s violence against Christians over Proposition 8:

At first, they just shouted at us, using crude, rude, and foul language and calling us names like “haters” and “bigots”. Since it was a long night, I can’t even begin to remember all of the things that were shouted and/or chanted at us. Then, they started throwing hot coffee, soda and alcohol on us and spitting (and maybe even peeing) on us. Then, a group of guys surrounded us with whistles, and blasted them inches away from our ears continually. Then, they started getting violent and started shoving us. At one point a man tried to steal one of our Bibles. Chrisdene noticed, so she walked up to him and said “Hey, that’s not yours, can you please give it back?”. He responded by hitting her on the head with the Bible, shoving her to the ground, and kicking her. I called the cops, and when they got there, they pulled her out of the circle and asked her if she wanted to press charges. She said “No, tell him I forgive him.”

Afterwards, she didn’t rejoin us in the circle, but she made friends with one of the people in the crowd, and really connected heart to heart. Roger got death threats. As the leader of our group, people looked him in the eyes and said “I am going to kill you.”, and they were serious. A cop heard one of them, and confronted him. (This part is kinda graphic, so you should skip the paragraph if you don’t want to be offended.) It wasn’t long before the violence turned to perversion. They were touching and grabbing me, and trying to shove things in my butt, and even trying to take off my pants – basically trying to molest me. I used one hand to hold my pants up, while I used the other arm to hold one of the girls. The guys huddled around all the girls, and protected them.

Here’s the aftermath:

This is of a piece with other mob action (remember the cross-stomping?) and recent boycotts of businesses whose owners contributed to Proposition 8. As someone who supports gay marriage, I think this is a horrible way to go about convincing the opposition.

The left-wing blogs applaud it all. They admit of no possible principled support for Proposition 8. They agree that anyone who supported it or voted for it is a hater and a bigot.

And when you start demonizing the other side, sometimes angry mobs form. And when angry mobs form, it can get violent.

It all comes down to what you think is the best method of persuasion. Do you admit that there may be a principled basis for your opponent’s argument, but do your best to persuade him that he’s wrong? Or do you simply conclude that your opponent’s arguments are evil, and that you have to step up the rhetoric and general level of nastiness?

Proposition 8 opponents have decided on the confrontational route. They have decided that anyone who disagrees with them is not just wrong, but bad and evil. And they have decided to fight what they perceive as nasty and dishonest behavior with more of the same.

I think we can all agree that their demonization, boycotts, and mob anger is counterproductive.

I have always said that the most dangerous human emotion is self-righteousness. It’s on display in spades in the video above.